Theodore W. Adorno makes a brave claim on the idea of “free time” and what constitutes as such. Once separated from ideological forces and asseverations, he presents his suspicion that “free time is tending toward the opposite of its own concept and is becoming a parody of itself. Unfreedom is expanding within free time, and most of the unfree people are as unconscious of the process as they are of their own unfreedom” (168). If this is true, and what we think of as leisure activity in fact bears no resemblance to its true name, then what can we, the shackled working class venture to say is free time? In the world according to Adorno, true autonomy makes up free time and can only be reached when we’re able to separate ourselves from ideology and our “culture industry”. It is achieved when we do what we actually want to do, rather than what we think we want to do. I liken this idea to playing music, not necessarily writing or composing, or even listening to, but simply playing with the intent of achieving an aesthetic gratification that can be set apart from one induced by a mass culture.

I’m not privileged enough to gain any compensation for my hobby, and I only call it a “hobby” because it is not what I do, meaning only a small portion of my everyday life is allotted to it; playing the piano. This is what I do: I work and I go to school. This is what my world revolves around, not because I want it to, but because it’s what I’m told to do and so I do it. Adorno argues that he is truly privileged because he does what he loves and he gets paid for it. His “work” just so happens to coincide with his free time and autonomy takes place because the polarity between the two does not exist. “My work, the production of philosophical and sociological studies and university teaching so far has been so pleasant to me that I am unable to express it within that opposition to free time that the current razor-sharp classification demands from people” (168). He is ultimately free because of this description of his life. But I would venture to say that although I don’t get paid for doing what I love, and while I’m still bound to the work force that apparently sabotages most of my “free time”, I do have this “hobby” that remains unattached from the constraints of a valueless mass culture, one which I’d like to remain liberated from.

Any effort for myself or other want-to-be dissidents to seek abdication and a sense of disillusionment from the artificial framework of this mass (or commercial) culture will be difficult because, according to Adorno, most people cannot even tell what being free is, even in regards to music, which the culture industry has perverted and pre-digested in order to capture the masses. Adorno argues that Popular music, a product which serves as a sort of respite from work by inducing relaxation, is cheap commercial entertainment that is “patterned and pre-digested” in order to spare the masses the effort of any participation, “without which there can be no receptivity to art” or music, thus serving as only a distraction from what could be free time.

While my musical talents resemble mediocrity at best, regardless, this vehicle I employ to kill time is authentic and meaningful to me. Similar to Adorno’s description, playing music is a “hobby” which is an integral element of my existence, and therefore adequately satiates the space of free time.